Every continent but Antarctica: the numbersHow many Gulen schools are there? In how many countries?

Page created October 2, 2011 Last updated Dec 24, 2012 by C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. - Citizens Against Special Interest Lobbying in Public SchoolsCASILIPS on Twitter, slideshare

Many news and academic sources have given estimates of the number of Gulen schools worldwide. None of these sources explains how the estimate was arrived at, or gives a list of the schools. The one exception is the book by Bayram Balci, "Missionnaires de l'Islam en Asie centrale : Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gulen" (Missionaries of Islam in Central Asia: The Turkish schools of Fethullah Gulen), which lists the names of the schools, but only in Central Asian countries.

It is noteworthy that researchers cannot seem to agree on the estimates of how many Gulen schools there are, in how many countries, etc. Yet it is clear from articles published by Gulenist news sources such as Zaman or Cihan News, as well as from statements on some school websites, that the Gulenists themselves are keeping count. Thus, the fact that the general public does not have access to the precise numbers is not because "nobody knows;" rather it is due entirely to the secrecy of the Gulen Movement.

“There are currently more than 1000 Gulen-inspired schools in more than 110 countries around the world. In the European countries, there are at least a dozen Gulen-inspired schools, and more than 150 smaller educational and cultural centers.”
”Himzet Movement” website (link)

Sep 2011

115

“Almost 115 countries around the world we have more than one thousand five hundred affiliated schools, which fallow [sic] the same ideas.” Website of ICAD Foundation, running Fountain International School in Philippines http://www.icad.org.ph/

Book: The Gulen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam by Helen Rose Ebaugh “Today, the Gulen-inspired movement has over 1,000 schools in 100 countries on 5 continents.”

Başkan, Filiz “The Fethullah Gülen community: Contribution or barrier to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey?” Middle Eastern Studies, 41: 6, 849 - 861
“Moreover, his supporters established more than 200 schools in 52
countries in five continents with his encouragement.”

It is sometimes unclear whether these estimates are supposed to include the Gulen schools inside Turkey. Another point of ambiguity is whether only K-12 schools are counted, or whether supplementary education institutions (study halls, homework centers, etc) are included.

Date

Number

Source

Sep 2011

>1500

“Almost 115 countries around the world we have more than one thousand five hundred affiliated schools, which fallow [sic] the same ideas.” Website of ICAD Foundation, running Fountain International School in Philippines http://www.icad.org.ph/

Book: The Gulen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam by Helen Rose Ebaugh “Today, the Gulen-inspired movement has over 1,000 schools in 100 countries on 5 continents.”

Başkan, Filiz “The Fethullah Gülen community: Contribution or barrier to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey?” Middle Eastern Studies, 41: 6, 849 - 861
“Moreover, his supporters established more than 200 schools in 52
countries in five continents with his encouragement.”

Newsweek Magazine: “Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt: The Ergenekon case exposes the power of a shadowy Islamic brotherhood that controls the Turkish police.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/05/15/behind-turkey-s-witch-hunt.html “It has business lobbying groups and think tanks in Washington and Brussels, owns universities, banks, TV networks and newspapers around the world, and operates schools in which more than 2 million students receive education, many with full scholarships.”

1997

26,500

“by 1997, over 250 Gulen-inspired educational institutions in nearly all parts of the world enrolled
more than 26,500 students” Fethullah Gulen and his Movement’s Islamic Ethic of Education, Bekim Agai, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies (Spring 2002), 11(1), 27–47
Footnote: The Turkish media give very exaggerated numbers with regard to these educational institutions and even the
National Education Ministry does not list all of them;

Source: Cosmopolitan Islamists in Turkey: Rethinking the Local in a Global Era. Yildiz Atasoy. CGPE Working Paper 04-03 Jan 2004. Centre for Global Political Economy, Simon Fraser University. http://www.sfu.ca/cgpe/pubs/Cosmopolitan%20Islamists%20in%20Turkey-WP.pdf
"The Gulen group has established more than 250 middle and lycee level schools in different areas of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. The number of schools it has founded in Turkey exceeds 20,000. It also has 7 universities, 5 of which are abroad and 2 of which are in Turkey."

"Moreover, his followers established more than 2,000 schools in 52 countries in 5 continents with his encouragement, including 125 in Turkey.” Source: Filiz Baskan “The political economy of Islamic finance in Turkey: the role of Fethullah Gulen and Asya Finans.” In: The Politics of Islamic Finance by Clement M. Henry and Rodney Wilson, Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Baskan cites Hulusi Turgut, “Fethullah Gulen ve Okullari,” Yeni Yuzyil, Oct 15/18/25, 1998 as his source.

Jan 2004

>20000 (??)

Source: Cosmopolitan Islamists in Turkey: Rethinking the Local in a Global Era. Yildiz Atasoy. CGPE Working Paper 04-03 Jan 2004. Centre for Global Political Economy, Simon Fraser University.
(link)
"The Gulen group has established more than 250 middle and lycee level schools in different areas of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. The number of schools it has founded in Turkey exceeds 20,000. It also has 7 universities, 5 of which are abroad and 2 of which are in Turkey."
Note: An
OECD report from 2005
gives 67179 as the number of schools in the Turkish Republic. If the estimate of Yildiz Atasoy were reliable (and that is very questionable), about 30% of schools in Turkey would be Gulen schools.